ABSTRACT
Identifying the epitope of an antibody is a key step in understanding its function and its potential as a therapeutic. Sequence-based clonal clustering can identify antibodies with similar epitope complementarity, however, antibodies from markedly different lineages but with similar structures can engage the same epitope. We describe a novel computational method for epitope profiling based on structural modelling and clustering. Using the method, we demonstrate that sequence dissimilar but functionally similar antibodies can be found across the Coronavirus Antibody Database, with high accuracy (92% of antibodies in multiple-occupancy structural clusters bind to consistent domains). Our approach functionally links antibodies with distinct genetic lineages, species origins, and coronavirus specificities. This indicates greater convergence exists in the immune responses to coronaviruses than is suggested by sequence-based approaches. Our results show that applying structural analytics to large class-specific antibody databases will enable high confidence structure-function relationships to be drawn, yielding new opportunities to identify functional convergence hitherto missed by sequence-only analysis.
Subject(s)
Antigens, Viral/chemistry , COVID-19/immunology , COVID-19/virology , Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte/chemistry , SARS-CoV-2/chemistry , SARS-CoV-2/immunology , Amino Acid Sequence , Animals , Antibodies, Neutralizing/chemistry , Antibodies, Neutralizing/genetics , Antibodies, Viral/chemistry , Antibodies, Viral/genetics , Antibodies, Viral/metabolism , Antibody Specificity , Antigen-Antibody Complex/chemistry , Antigen-Antibody Complex/genetics , Antigen-Antibody Reactions/genetics , Antigen-Antibody Reactions/immunology , Computational Biology , Coronavirus/chemistry , Coronavirus/genetics , Coronavirus/immunology , Databases, Chemical , Epitope Mapping , Epitopes, B-Lymphocyte/genetics , Humans , Mice , Models, Molecular , Pandemics , SARS-CoV-2/genetics , Single-Domain Antibodies/immunologyABSTRACT
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is more transmissible than previous coronaviruses and causes a more serious illness than influenza. The SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein binds to the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor as a prelude to viral entry into the cell. Using a naive llama single-domain antibody library and PCR-based maturation, we have produced two closely related nanobodies, H11-D4 and H11-H4, that bind RBD (KD of 39 and 12 nM, respectively) and block its interaction with ACE2. Single-particle cryo-EM revealed that both nanobodies bind to all three RBDs in the spike trimer. Crystal structures of each nanobody-RBD complex revealed how both nanobodies recognize the same epitope, which partly overlaps with the ACE2 binding surface, explaining the blocking of the RBD-ACE2 interaction. Nanobody-Fc fusions showed neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2 (4-6 nM for H11-H4, 18 nM for H11-D4) and additive neutralization with the SARS-CoV-1/2 antibody CR3022.